People who pay attention to publishing and e-books may have heard the news that German researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute (the birthplace of the MP3) recently unveiled a text-watermarking scheme called "SiDiM" that creates individually indentifiable versions of e-books by making small, randomized text substitutions throughout the book.

It’s hard to say what’s more shocking to me: the temerity of Hachette to attempt to dictate terms to its rivals on the use of anti-customer technology, or the evidence-free insistence that DRM has some nexus with improving the commercial fortunes of writers and their publishers.

Pity the poor antipiracy pitchman. Digital media means perfect copying, and most pirate goods are now of comparable quality to the official release, and often superior to the commercial alternative. Pirated e-books, for example, can be easily converted to any format, for any player. And pirated games don’t include antipiracy technology that force-quits your game every time your network connection bobbles.

Apple makes some pretty cool products. If you’ve spent any time stuck in the Microsoft Office world, Apple’s office products—Keynote, Pages, and Numbers—are a revelation. The best part is you can open MS Office files with Apple’s products, and save them into Apple’s format, or many others.

Talking with the lower echelon employees of publishing reminds me of a description I once read about the mutual embarrassment of Western and Soviet biologists when they talked about genetics. Soviet-era scientists were required, on pain of imprisonment, to endorse Lysenkoism, a discredited theory of inheritance favored by Stalin for ideological reasons.

December 10 is Human Rights Day, as designated by the U.N. General Assembly and observed all over the world. In honor of the occasion, I want to address the human rights implications associated with something central to all of us in the publishing industry: copyright policy.

It's been nine months since the launch of With a Little Help, and, as with most trade books, the action has slowed down. All in all, the book has earned me $2,231.23 over the summer and cost me $167.88 in costs.

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